Wall Street Journal Plans To Launch a Social Network

News Corporation, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, is poised to launch a new social network. Described in The Times of London as a "platform for 'like-minded people' to meet online and share ideas," the network that will launch in a few months is not exactly the next LinkedIn. "It really is more of a forum to talk about finance," explained Colleen Schwartz, director of corporate communications at Dow Jones.

News Corporation, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, is poised to launch a new social network.

Described in The Times of London as a “platform for ‘like-minded people’ to meet online and share ideas,” the network that will launch in a few months is not exactly the next LinkedIn.

“It really is more of a forum to talk about finance,” explained Colleen Schwartz, director of corporate communications at Dow Jones, although members will create their WSJ profiles using their real names.

The network will complement an existing product, WSJ Portfolio, which aggregates all of the user’s accounts into one consolidated view and weaves in business headlines from Barron’s and WSJ for the clients to read while they monitor their investments. Since its launch, the portfolio tool has synced and loaded $12 billion worth of assets.

The new WSJ Profile will link Dow Jones customers to each other.

News Corporation also has plans for an instant-messaging service for customers to chat with one another privately, as opposed to discussing business in a public setting like they would on Twitter. The service will compete with Bloomberg’s chat tool, Instant Bloomberg.

Schwartz said the company is building these platforms with advertising in mind, but had no further details to share about the business model.